Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution on the Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022. This is the first industrial relations legislation in a long time that is designed with the express goal of improving the conditions of workers. It is an IR reform that is not aimed at undermining the pay and conditions of those who carried this country through the darkest moments of the pandemic or the workers who built one of the most successful economies in the world. IR reform should never cause the conditions of workers to slide backwards.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the severe problems that workers are coping with. Aged-care workers, childcare educators and other workers in the care economy struggled. But workers in all sectors were faced with the reality that the IR system was not fit for purpose and that it did not work in Australia's modern economy. There have been serious structural deficiencies in the industrial relations system over the past decade. The relationship between the unemployment rate and wages growth has been completely severed. If it had held up, wages growth would be skyrocketing off the back of the lowest unemployment rate since 1974. But ask any Australian and they will tell you that this is not happening. Workers will tell you that wages are not keeping up and that the work has become more insecure. And there is data to back this up.

More people are employed as casuals than ever before, and this is no longer just a transitional situation. The consequences of this were evident when workers could not afford to take off work when they fell sick. These workers had no choice. It was either go to work or not be able to feed their families. These are the consequences of insecure work. Movement between casual and permanent employment is lower than it was during the first decade of the last century. Instead, there is an increase in casuals moving to fixed-term employment. The bill will limit the use of fixed-term contracts beyond two years except in genuine and appropriate circumstances. Australians would be experiencing wages growth of almost four per cent if previous trends held true. Instead, Australians are seeing wage growth at nearly half that level. With inflation possibly peaking at eight per cent, according to the Reserve Bank, that is a real wage cut for workers. If wages won't rise when unemployment and underutilisation is low, when will they?

The purpose of the industrial relations bill is to deliver on both of our commitments at the election and the outcomes of the Jobs and Skills Summit. For the past 10 years the industrial relations system has been failing workers and failing to do what it was designed for. Half as many new arrangements were made in 2021 as were made in 2013-14. Enterprise bargaining agreements yield better pay and broader benefits for workers. Lifting rates of enterprise bargaining will get wages moving after a wasted decade under the coalition government. And do you know what? Workers who are paid properly will also increase their productivity, which is better for businesses all over the country.

A major component of the bill is the introduction of greater access to multi-employer bargaining arrangements, because of all the evidence of it boosting the conditions of workers. The idea that multi-employer bargaining will hamper productivity and cause widespread industrial disputes is unfounded, and it's certainly not supported by international evidence. In fact, most OECD countries use multi-employer bargaining, and they tend to have lower wage inequality and no more industrial disputes. The industries that will benefit most from multi-employer bargaining are those that tend to be younger, female dominated and lower skilled, but all workers have the right to better pay and conditions, and many sectors of our economy are disadvantaged by the current industrial relations system.

Organising and unionising is difficult for workers in the childhood education and the care and community service sectors, which are primarily composed of thousands of smaller workplaces. The Fair Work Commission will be allowed to authorise workers to bargain together, and it's only fair, given the power that some organisations have in such decentralised sectors. Importantly, some exemptions are made, and our government has ensured that small businesses cannot be forced into this stream of bargaining.

While multi-employer bargaining will help get wages moving, the institutions that uphold the rights of workers must themselves be strengthened. The government will strengthen the Fair Work Act to ensure better compliance and enforcement. We'll ensure the Fair Work Commission is adequately resourced so that it can help workers and businesses reach agreements during negotiations, and the government will ensure workers can reclaim unpaid entitlements, increasing the cap that can be recovered to $100,000. And remember, it's the workers' money in the first place.

Workers are entitled to a fair wage for their labour, and they are entitled to feel safe in their workplace. The bill will ensure that sexual harassment is explicitly prohibited in the Fair Work Act, as recommended by the Respect@Work report. Sexual harassment is never acceptable. While there has been a cultural shift over the years, the statistics on workplace sexual harassment are way too high. The Respect@Work report found that one in three Australians has experienced sexual harassment in the last five years. This has increased since 2012, when the number was one in five, and that is just unacceptable. Systems that are in place are often complex and difficult to navigate, meaning that only 17 per cent of workers report the harassment. The legislation will create a new dispute resolution mechanism within the Fair Work Commission to ensure that all workers have access to better reporting mechanisms.

The government is also committed to closing the gender pay gap. The gender pay gap now stands at 14.1 per cent, an increase of 0.3 per cent, and there has been nothing done over the last nine years to help it close. The primary reason for the pay gap centres around the lack of flexibility, inadequate sharing of caring responsibilities, female dominated industries being underpaid, and the pay disparities between men and women in the same industry and with the same job—something that I have seen work in practice. Governments have an important role in play, and this bill will implement several measures to improve gender equality in the workplace. A simple but vital measure is banning pay secrecy clauses, which always are in the man's favour. Workers must be allowed to talk about their pay, because this ensures transparency and the accountability of slack bosses. These clauses have been largely used to hide gender pay disparity, and this is a symptomatic issue. Not only are individual women in workplaces paid less on average than men, but entire sectors that are female dominated tend to be lower paid and subject to more insecure work. It is amazing that this is the case.

The Fair Work Act will make gender equality a key objective of the commission and will establish a panel on pay equity and a panel on the care and community sector, because the female dominated sectors tend to be those in the care economy. While we all appreciate those in the care sectors and we love to thank them for their amazing work, I really think they need more than that. They deserve to be adequately compensated for the work that they do for all of us. That is why these two new panels are so important in ensuring the Fair Work Commission can deliver on its gender equity objective. Additionally, we'll put in place a statutory equal remuneration principle. This will make it easier for the Fair Work Commission to order pay increases for workers in low-paid and female dominated industries.

Industrial relations reform is not an easy task. This bill is a significant first step for the workers of this country. It's the first tranche of the government's industrial relations reforms, and it is the step towards the necessary reforms that our economy and our workers have been desperate for. With one in four Australians struggling to get by, the workers of this country need wages to move again. They can't wait any longer, and these tough economic times show us the consequences of a decade of stagnant growth. We will get wages moving again. I commend the bill to the House.

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